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CVE-2026-98996

fs: don't silently unmount busy mounts

Products / packages Linux

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Severity and exploitation

Not in CISA KEVNo CVSS score

KEV coverage does not rule out exploitation.

KEV checked 15/11/2026, 22:05:33 UTC

Severity

unknown

CVSS measures technical severity, not the likelihood of an attack.

Known exploitation

Not listed in the checked CISA KEV catalog

Absence from CISA KEV does not rule out attacks.

Public exploit

Not established by this record

Missing evidence does not mean no public exploit exists.

Remediation

Fix status not established

No structured fix or guidance is available here. Check the latest publisher advisory.

What this means

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

Source excerpt · Linux

Attack conditions

No attack-condition excerpt has been identified here. Review the full source description and references for authentication, network access, and configuration requirements.

Review supporting sources →

Affected versions

Check the exact model, release, and any platform requirements against your installation.

Linux · Linux

Linux

14 ranges

Compare with this publisher’s ranges. This does not inspect your installation.

affected

99b19d16471e9c3faa85cad38abc9cbbe04c6d55 → before 97c9ca40b67eafbe61a253e28cd51dddb7c6bec4

git versions

99b19d16471e9c3faa85cad38abc9cbbe04c6d55 → before bf2c8dec26fb792876b5e9bde7030c45d8be3908

git versions

99b19d16471e9c3faa85cad38abc9cbbe04c6d55 → before a210ac218c307513d43e98a08f23c2dfbeeebc2f

git versions

99b19d16471e9c3faa85cad38abc9cbbe04c6d55 → before 6857e209015f95be7a8f19a9cd5dac345b9b9859

git versions

dc5ce95b0252d143497283f7f659840d4f8a79d0

git versions

fdb8f10499924d96b8eb60cc1354b278f6fcf0e9

git versions

bb4fbf094b440a9209ed88c8681960d4b26eec0f

git versions

b43f81ef0babcc07db1eaaece37c989204e4ff00

git versions

81311d1698c0c87c972ba71d3ce44a617b52ea21

git versions

4.1.43 → before 4.2

semver versions

4.4.78 → before 4.5

semver versions

4.9.39 → before 4.10

semver versions

4.11.12 → before 4.12

semver versions

4.12.3 → before 4.13

semver versions

unaffected

unknown

Other versions: unaffected

Linux · Linux

Linux

6 ranges

Compare with this publisher’s ranges. This does not inspect your installation.

affected

4.13

unaffected

0 → before 4.13

semver versions

6.12.117 → through 6.12.*

semver versions

6.18.57 → through 6.18.*

semver versions

7.2.11 → through 7.2.*

semver versions

7.3 → through *

original_commit_for_fix versions

unknown

Other versions: affected

Automatic dependency matching is unavailable for this record. Use the product evidence and publisher’s instructions to check your installation.

What to do

Compare your installed product and version with the affected versions above. A matching product name alone does not confirm exposure.

No structured fix or remediation guidance is available here. Check the full source description and vendor’s latest advisory for a patch or workaround; do not assume another version is safe.

cve.new guidance unless attributed to a publisher. This page does not inspect your installation.

Public exploit evidence

No public exploit reference is identified in the imported evidence. This is not a claim that no exploit exists.

Original source description

Read the full publisher description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

fs: don't silently unmount busy mounts

The propagate_mount_busy() helper exists to decide whether a synchronous can suceed. It does that by looking at the copies of the victims in the mounts its parent propagates to. One of those functions from propagation hell.

It skips a copy that has child mounts except for the case of a single child mount covering the copy's root. That algorithm used to be exact. It isn't anymore.

Originally only childless copies were unmounted during propagation. And 1064f874abc0 ("mnt: Tuck mounts under others instead of creating shadow/side mounts.") ended up adding covered mounts to both sides in one go.

Along came 99b19d16471e ("mnt: In propgate_umount handle visiting mounts in any order") and that started to unmount more than before:

[1]: A copy of a mount is unmounted when each of its children is either its overmount or a copy of the victim itself. In the former case the overmount gets reparented. In the latter case the copy of the victim will end up being unmounted.

So propagate_umount() ended up being rewritten without adjusting propagate_mount_busy(). And currently propagate_mount_busy() doesn't look at copies of the victim that have two or more children nor a single child that is not the overmount.

So any such copy in [1] is not checked for references. The result is that a synchronous unmount succeeds, pulling out a mount that is still in use.

A container can run into this with its own mounts. The host shares a tree with the container and the host has a mount in that tree:

mount -t tmpfs none /mnt mount --make-shared /mnt mount -t tmpfs none /mnt/a

The container's /mnt is a slave copy of the host mount. The container now takes a detached copy of the tree and mounts that copy beneath its propagated copy of /mnt/a and keeps the file descriptor to the tree open:

unshare -m --propagation unchanged mount --make-rslave / fd = open_tree(AT_FDCWD, "/mnt", OPEN_TREE_CLONE | AT_RECURSIVE) move_mount(fd, "", AT_FDCWD, "/mnt/a", MOVE_MOUNT_BENEATH)

grep /mnt /proc/self/mountinfo 775 355 ... /mnt ... master:646 777 775 ... /mnt/a ... master:646 776 777 ... /mnt/a ... master:647 778 777 ... /mnt/a/a ... master:647

The now attached tree (777) is now mounted beneath the container's copy of /mnt/a. That's also where the host mount sits (as seen from the host mount namespace). So the propagated copy (776) of the host's mount is on top of its root and the copy of that (778) is inside it. Now the host runs:

umount /mnt/a

and it succeeds. The moved tree tree and the copy inside of it are gone from the container. Now only the propagated copy is left and it got reparented to where it was before:

grep /mnt /proc/self/mountinfo 775 355 ... /mnt ... master:646 776 775 ... /mnt/a ...

But the file descriptor still refers to the moved tree. So a synchronous umount detached a mount that is still in use.

Teach propagate_mount_busy() the same checks that propagate_umount() does. It now checks for a single victim mount without children for which it can assume that MNT_LOCKED is cleared on every copy like propagate_umount() does. The copies form chains. IOW, when a copy itself receives propagation from the victim's parent then the mount at the same mountpoint inside that copy is a copy as well. Whether a mount receives propagation from the victim's can simply be checked by walking its masters. Walk each chain once from its top so we are sure that nested copies stay linear. Check every reference once of every copy that gets unmounted.

References

4 sources

Inside the record

Evidence available

Package identity · not supplied
Version evidence
Remediation guidance · not supplied
Weakness classification · not supplied
Additional publishers · not supplied

Describes the evidence in this view, not whether the product is safe.

Original records

CVE-2026-98996

View the latest unmodified CVE JSON from the official source. It may be newer than this imported page.

cve.new JSON →

Environment requirements

These conditions apply together as specified by the publisher. A matching product name alone does not establish exposure.

Linux · platform conditions

Any condition may hold

Vulnerable product

cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

From (inclusive): 4.13

Before: 6.12.117

Vulnerable product

cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

From (inclusive): 4.13

Before: 6.18.57

Vulnerable product

cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

From (inclusive): 4.13

Before: 7.2.11

Vulnerable product

cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

From (inclusive): 4.13

Before: 7.3

Vulnerable product

cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

From (inclusive): 4.1.43

Vulnerable product

cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

From (inclusive): 4.4.78

Vulnerable product

cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

From (inclusive): 4.9.39

Vulnerable product

cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

From (inclusive): 4.11.12

Vulnerable product

cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

From (inclusive): 4.12.3

Applicability preview
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Contributing organizations · 1
Linux

Assigning organization

2026-11-10

Timeline

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  1. Advisory published

    Publication date supplied by the source.

  2. Source updated

    Latest modification date supplied by the source.

  3. Last imported by cve.new

    Latest catalog import, not the date we first saw this advisory.

What changed

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